If MySQL tosses ‘0000-00-00’ into a date column for no apparent reason one more time I swear to God I’m switching to PostgreSQL. And I mean it.

Being a huge fan of outliners, I’ve pretty much tried them all. OmniOutliner is about the best of them, but is a little too twitchy for my taste. If you like outliners but wish they would manage larger amounts of text or include a better search engine or basically just feel better, look no further than Hog Bay Notebook

Here’s a screenshot of a (seriously pruned) version of the notebook I use for managing my GTD tasks…

It’s light, fast, and feels exactly like an app such as this should. Better text handling than OmniOutliner and better outlining than DevonTHINK. I’m diggin’ it.

This Gadgetopia post has a great quote from Joel Spolsky along with a bit of a rant about the RFP/Proposal process.

David Foster Wallace books tend to take a very long time for me to finish. Infinite Jest took almost a year. After just 2 short months, I finally finished his latest book of short stories, Oblivion, and am relieved, if not exactly satisfied. This guy just throws the fastest, most convoluted shitload of words at the reader that when it’s not dizzying it approaches painful. Here’s a short sentence…

”Many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person’s life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn’t even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so little relation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-another-word English we all communicate with each other with that it could easily take a whole lifetime just to spell out the contents of one split-second’s flash of thoughts and connections, etc. –and yet we all seem to go around trying to use English (or whatever language our native country happens to use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people what we’re thinking and to find out what they’re thinking, when in fact deep down everybody knows it’s a charade and they’re just going through the motions.”

Did I say short? There are longer ones. Or try this one on…

“Structurally, this scene apparently functions as both the climax of the protasis and the as it were engine of the narrative’s rising action, because at just this point we are told that the original exemplum splits or diverges into at least the main epictatic variants.”

I’d tell you if it was brilliant or crap, but I’m too busy just trying to hang on. Most of the pieces have almost no narrative normalcy at all. He goes into page after page of minutiae and sometimes never returns. If you want something that acts like a real story, try The Suffering Channel, which finishes the book. Yes, it’s about an “artist” who’s crap comes out in the shape of things like the Liberty Bell. I know, but at least it makes sense. The best of the lot is Incarnations of Burned Children. Three harrowing pages, but very well done.

I’m off to take a pill of some sort.

I want a purse. Or rather, a Man-Bag. With summer approaching, two Moleskins, phone, pen(s), camera and whatnot becomes a bit too much to lug around. This Buyer’s Guide to Man-Bags seems like a good place to start, but I’m open to suggestions.

Not sure how I feel about the Flickr purchase by Yahoo yet, but Caterina makes a good case

I like pens more than I should, given the amount of actual writing I do. With my recent “Moleskine” acquisitions, this has changed somewhat. Anyway, when I do write it’s with one of three or four different pens.

• Pilot G-2 for everyday notes and whatnot. They cost a buck or so, but write really, really well.

• Montblanc Meisterstuck Rollerball. Overpriced (a gift), beautiful and feels fantastic. Trouble is the ink sometimes chops up on me. I think with G-2 ink it would be perfect. (I tried fitting it with G-2 refill - don’t do that.)

• Fisher Space Pen. Always with me. Tiny in my pocket but full-sized when open. Writes anywhere, under any conditions. Haven’t tried it in space yet.

• Waterman Phileas Fountain Pen. I bought this for use when writing just for fun. It’s my first fountain pen and only $35.00. I should’ve gotten the fine nib. The medium one throws down too much ink too quickly and, being a lefty, I tend to smear it easily. And it’s plastic. I hate plastic. The Expert II is probably going to replace it soon.

Mike Shea does a very nice and more complete pen review.

Yes, I would happily purchase the new Fiona Apple disc, Extraordinary Machine, in a heartbeat. No Sony will not be releasing it. So I stole it from the net instead. See what happens?

I must confess to a recent infatuation with the idea of “Audiophile-grade” gear. I don’t necessarily want to own the stuff (that would be just crazy, right?) but I would like to understand the unbelievable lengths people will go (and money they’ll spend) on listening to music.

And now, From PsiberAudio, tube amps for your iPod. With features like “Massive 1.2 Farads of reservoir capacitance in the power supply,” how can I not want one?

Most sane people hate DRM right along with the products that implement it. I tend to grant a little leeway for those companies who at least seem to be trying to strike a fair balance. Apple and the iTunes Music Store are (or were) a good example of this. You see, the problem with Digital Rights Management is that the “Rights” part can be terribly mis-“Managed”. The latest iTunes update, for example, (once again) reduces the rights I have to share and stream the music I paid for. There’s nothing stopping them from continuing this behaviour. Cory Doctorow has more.